May's video releases begin with Tom Cruise as “Jack Reacher,” the ex-military police hero of Lee Child's novels. He's asked to clear a trained sniper accused of firing on a crowd. Robert Duvall and Werner Herzog appear. With awful timing, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie's film came between the Sandy Hook massacre and Christmas.

While that film's $80 million gross is considered low, that's nothing compared to the people who haven't seen Tom Hanks and Halle Berry play folks from the past through the future in “Cloud Atlas,” an extravagantly designed, very long puzzler based on David Mitchell's elegant novel and directed by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis. No way was this ever recouping its budget of more than $100 million. The Village Voice and Time named it last year's worst film, so it's clearly worth seeing.

The 69-year-old twins Louise and Martine Fokken, now rather large with snowy white hair, worked for 50 years as prostitutes in Amsterdam's red light district. In “Meet the Fokkens,” they reminisce and revisit old haunts. Although described as delightful and rollicking, this documentary is mostly sad as well as revealing about lives that were never easy, although they remain upbeat.

“Pierre Etaix” was a clown, cartoonist, vaudevillean, and designer of gags for Jacques Tati. He made five features and three shorts, all restored and gathered in this set. They show an original, highly visual mind schooled in silent slapstick and with a melancholy genius befuddled by the world. Jerry Lewis and Blake Edwards were fans.

For example, the backward hero of “The Suitor” seeks a wife, while the millionaire in “Yoyo” runs away to find love in a circus until his son continues the restless tradition. “Le Grand Amour” follows a marriage through a seven-year itch. All are quietly, carefully brilliant.

The Oscar-winning “Gate of Hell” (1953) remains an eye-poppingly colorful tragedy about a samurai's love for a married woman. One of Japan's breakthroughs into the U.S. market, it's now on DVD and Blu-ray from Criterion.

On the other hand, Americans have probably never seen the titles in “Masaki Kobayashi Against the System,” four Japanese films of social protest against corruption (even in baseball), the legacy of war crimes and social decay. The last film, “The Inheritance,” a sleek '60s thriller in gorgeous widescreen black and white, traces the schemes to find a millionaire's heirs.

Classic TV

“Have Gun Will Travel: The Sixth Season” (in two volumes) and “Maverick: The Complete Second Season” are the latest DVD sets of two of TV's greatest westerns.

The former stars Richard Boone in violent, brooding morality plays where a wandering gunman blows away bad guys and quotes poetry. It couldn't be farther from the humorous, unpredictable stories of the Maverick boys, with James Garner and Jack Kelly as gambling brothers who cross paths with scoundrels and smart women. Guests include Roger Moore (not yet as their cousin) and young Clint Eastwood.

TV doesn't make 'em like that anymore, but “Dexter: The Seventh Season” and “True Blood: The Complete Fifth Season” could never have been made back then. The serial-killer thriller deepens its already compromised moral complexity as Dexter's sister discovers the truth about him. As for the show about vampires, werewolves, fairies, and what-have-you, it's a thick gumbo of satirical comedy, Southern atmosphere and unabashed sex, this time in the middle of a vampire civil war. Both are heady, compulsive viewing. Michael Barrett is a freelance writer in San Antonio.